8 ms·

This ^ I say this every time and no one has ever been able to answer: how is a simple "don't prioritize traffic" some kind of competition-killing regulation, a

by and0 10y ago

This ^ I say this every time and no one has ever been able to answer: how is a simple "don't prioritize traffic" some kind of competition-killing regulation, and how would removing it actually create competition anyway?

neumann 10y ago
Agreed, and given there isn't a convincing answer, this 'solution' is more of a ways to insert deregulation into law on a small level for later expansion (probably when comcast complains that it is anti-competitive).
JoshTriplett 10y ago
If you phrase it as just "don't prioritize traffic", you've just broken most CDNs, as well as QoS that optimizes for latency/bandwidth to improve VoIP and similar. There's absolutely nothing wrong with, for instance, a content provider handing an ISP a box that sits on their network, mirrors/caches content, and serves it up to that ISP's customers. That helps the content provider, the ISP, and the ISP's customers. And I don't think the majority of "net neutrality" advocates want to break that. When people talk about "net neutrality", the problems they have in mind tend to look like either an ISP extorting content providers to extract extra revenue, or an ISP giving their own first-party services an advantage by deliberately degrading third-party services. For instance, see Comcast and Netflix. But even then, how do you draw a bright line between "deliberately degrading", "not giving an advantage to", and "not doing anything to address bandwidth problems when they arise"? (Comcast could claim the latter regarding Netflix, even though it seems obvious what it means when they don't arrange additional bandwidth on those saturated links.) What if the ISP provides the CDN infrastructure, rather than the content provider? What if the ISP contracts with a third-party CDN? How would you suggest writing a regulation that doesn't break CDNs and similar, and that can tell the difference between "deliberately hurting" and "not helping"? How will that regulation adapt when people come up with new ideas to make the web faster? (One angle I could imagine working: limiting the ability of one company or family of companies to run both an ISP and network services via that ISP. Still hard to write something robust, though.)
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > There's absolutely nothing wrong with, for instance, a content provider handing an ISP a box that sits on their network, mirrors/caches content, and serves it up to that ISP's customers. That helps the content provider, the ISP, and the ISP's customers. And I don't think the majority of "net neutrality" advocates want to break that. ...until the ISP decides to charge a large amount of money for the ability to do that, and then under-provision their peering links so that there is no other way to have adequate performance. But there is a simple way to fix that. Require last mile ISPs to do free peering with anyone who has traffic for their last mile customers. If you bring traffic directly to their local central office, they have to take it and deliver it up to the speed that they've sold to their customers. Then they can offer all the CDN service they like, which people will use as long as they're charging market rates but decline and rely on peering (and install their CDN equipment across the street) if they try to charge monopoly prices.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    > ...until the ISP decides to charge a large amount of money for the ability to do that, and then under-provision their peering links so that there is no other way to have adequate performance. The latter is the primary problem here. > Require last mile ISPs to do free peering with anyone who has traffic for their last mile customers. What does "last mile ISP" mean here? DSL is no longer competitive, and most implementations of cable and fiber have no separation between "infrastructure provider" and "bandwidth provider". > If you bring traffic directly to their local central office, they have to take it and deliver it up to the speed that they've sold to their customers. What if their central office isn't connected to anyone else directly, because they get all their bandwidth and peering from one or more of the major backbones? Presumably they can say "go to those backbones", rather than having to start making peering arrangements with individual services. > but decline and rely on peering (and install their CDN equipment across the street) if they try to charge monopoly prices What if their central office doesn't have an "across the street" where you can put servers? Or what if they don't have a "central office", period?
    - 10y ago
iamatworknow 10y ago
Say you have an area with two ISPs -- Provider A with 400k subscribers and B with 50k. Both have a soft data cap of like 50 gigs/month. Netflix could approach Provider B and say, "Hey, how about we pay you to remove the data cap on Netflix traffic?". All of a sudden Provider B can advertise that their customers can watch all the Netflix they want with no buffering! People will jump ship and leave Provider A for Provider B, thus "creating competition". Disclaimer: I personally think the internet should be treated as a public utility, but the above scenario is (probably) what anti-net neutrality proponents believe.
brightball 10y ago
Just to take a stab at answering it: What if a company wanted to offer 2 networks for customers: 1 in which they tell you they'll shape the network traffic to ensure consistent performance for all non-video traffic and another in which they tell it's completely unshaped? It would be interesting to see the two side by side as actual consumer choices. If I'm buying for an office, for example, I'd take the shaped-kill-the-video plan all dang day. If I'm at home...not so much.
- wtallis 10y ago
  Any such ISP would be lying to their customers with a false dichotomy. The smart way of shaping network traffic to ensure consistent performance for all non-video traffic would have the side effect of ensuring consistent performance for all video traffic, up to the limit of the ISP having oversubscribed their lines—and that limit obviously still exists for non-video uses too. Video is not the problem. Congestion is, whether or not video is part of the traffic contributing to the congestion. Congestion can be managed reasonably without discriminating against video, and even if an ISP wants to discriminate against video (eg. due to having a conflict of interest in the form of a separate video delivery service) the ISP should still want robust congestion management in place to handle growing volumes of non-video traffic.
DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
There is a case to be had for how vertical-integration makes businesses more efficient and means there can be some cost-savings for consumers (e.g. if Comcast zero-rated their own streaming video service and included it in their customers' cable Internet fees then consumers would save $10/mo they wouldn't be paying to Netflix - in much the same way Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer meant no-one pays for Netscape or Opera anymore). A problem with simplifying the problem to "prioritizing traffic" when engaging with laypeople is that opponents of net-neutrality can set-up a strawman argument presenting NN as "treating gaming and porn traffic the same as vital 911 and emergency services traffic on the Internet!" (i.e. conflating NN with QoS), or arguing it's only fair that popular services pay for the extra data transfer they use (that's what peering agreements are for and is unrelated to NN), or worse: proclaiming NN will enable child pornography: https://thenextweb.com/us/2010/08/19/riaa-speaks-out-against-net-neutrality-again/ https://thenextweb.com/us/2010/08/19/riaa-speaks-out-against... - we should call it what it is: anti-economic rent-seeking behavior on the part of the monopolistic audience gatekeepers. I believe NN is an example of a "good" regulation necessary to enable free markets - I'd wager the majority of genuine (non-astroturf) NN opponents take the stance in the sincere belief that Government 'interference and regulation' should not impact ISPs' internal business practices - so you should frame it as something "that enables free-markets and increases competition which is better for the consumer and industry" (and avoid the R-word)
- massysett 10y ago
  As a NN opponent, you have somewhat captured my viewpoint. Mostly I think NN is fighting the last war. NN proponents continually assert there is no competition for wired Internet and, therefore, it must be regulated. I think looking at wired Internet defines much too narrow a market. As wireless proliferates, it will become increasingly important, and competition in wireless is alive and well. The recent reignition of wars over "unlimited" data underscores this. I am reminded of the zeal to regulate or break up Microsoft. I was one of those zealots. Of course, then mobile changed everything, and now it doesn't matter so much that Microsoft has a monopoly on Windows PCs. If I were Comcast I'd be scared, and legitimately so. The wireless players have access to most American consumers. Each cable operator only has access to the homes that get its wire--a small fraction of the market available to a wireless company. We're better off with vibrant cable operators who can compete with wireless however they see best. If that means zero rating or non-neutral networks, OK. Further, I am struck by the arrogance of the belief that the government knows best how to regulate this market. Looking back I think it's absurd that I wanted government to break MS into "browser co." and "OS co." The market took care of this problem and now Windows users proactively install Chrome. I think that in a few short years, the drive to regulate the Internet will look like similar folly. So in short I see no problem here to solve and I do not think government should get involved.
subverter 10y ago
I think it's because it removes an entire vector that these companies can compete on. They can compete on price, support, coverage, etc. – but service-wise, they all have to be the same. They can't differentiate themselves, which is important to entice entrepreneurs to get into the business.
- and0 10y ago
  Sounds like a utility to me!
- st3v3r 10y ago
  I fail to see how that's a problem.

by and0 10y ago

neumann 10y ago

Agreed, and given there isn't a convincing answer, this 'solution' is more of a ways to insert deregulation into law on a small level for later expansion (probably when comcast complains that it is anti-competitive).

JoshTriplett 10y ago

If you phrase it as just "don't prioritize traffic", you've just broken most CDNs, as well as QoS that optimizes for latency/bandwidth to improve VoIP and similar. There's absolutely nothing wrong with, for instance, a content provider handing an ISP a box that sits on their network, mirrors/caches content, and serves it up to that ISP's customers. That helps the content provider, the ISP, and the ISP's customers. And I don't think the majority of "net neutrality" advocates want to break that. When people talk about "net neutrality", the problems they have in mind tend to look like either an ISP extorting content providers to extract extra revenue, or an ISP giving their own first-party services an advantage by deliberately degrading third-party services. For instance, see Comcast and Netflix. But even then, how do you draw a bright line between "deliberately degrading", "not giving an advantage to", and "not doing anything to address bandwidth problems when they arise"? (Comcast could claim the latter regarding Netflix, even though it seems obvious what it means when they don't arrange additional bandwidth on those saturated links.) What if the ISP provides the CDN infrastructure, rather than the content provider? What if the ISP contracts with a third-party CDN? How would you suggest writing a regulation that doesn't break CDNs and similar, and that can tell the difference between "deliberately hurting" and "not helping"? How will that regulation adapt when people come up with new ideas to make the web faster? (One angle I could imagine working: limiting the ability of one company or family of companies to run both an ISP and network services via that ISP. Still hard to write something robust, though.)

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> There's absolutely nothing wrong with, for instance, a content provider handing an ISP a box that sits on their network, mirrors/caches content, and serves it up to that ISP's customers. That helps the content provider, the ISP, and the ISP's customers. And I don't think the majority of "net neutrality" advocates want to break that. ...until the ISP decides to charge a large amount of money for the ability to do that, and then under-provision their peering links so that there is no other way to have adequate performance. But there is a simple way to fix that. Require last mile ISPs to do free peering with anyone who has traffic for their last mile customers. If you bring traffic directly to their local central office, they have to take it and deliver it up to the speed that they've sold to their customers. Then they can offer all the CDN service they like, which people will use as long as they're charging market rates but decline and rely on peering (and install their CDN equipment across the street) if they try to charge monopoly prices.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  > ...until the ISP decides to charge a large amount of money for the ability to do that, and then under-provision their peering links so that there is no other way to have adequate performance. The latter is the primary problem here. > Require last mile ISPs to do free peering with anyone who has traffic for their last mile customers. What does "last mile ISP" mean here? DSL is no longer competitive, and most implementations of cable and fiber have no separation between "infrastructure provider" and "bandwidth provider". > If you bring traffic directly to their local central office, they have to take it and deliver it up to the speed that they've sold to their customers. What if their central office isn't connected to anyone else directly, because they get all their bandwidth and peering from one or more of the major backbones? Presumably they can say "go to those backbones", rather than having to start making peering arrangements with individual services. > but decline and rely on peering (and install their CDN equipment across the street) if they try to charge monopoly prices What if their central office doesn't have an "across the street" where you can put servers? Or what if they don't have a "central office", period?
  - 10y ago

iamatworknow 10y ago

Say you have an area with two ISPs -- Provider A with 400k subscribers and B with 50k. Both have a soft data cap of like 50 gigs/month. Netflix could approach Provider B and say, "Hey, how about we pay you to remove the data cap on Netflix traffic?". All of a sudden Provider B can advertise that their customers can watch all the Netflix they want with no buffering! People will jump ship and leave Provider A for Provider B, thus "creating competition". Disclaimer: I personally think the internet should be treated as a public utility, but the above scenario is (probably) what anti-net neutrality proponents believe.

brightball 10y ago

Just to take a stab at answering it: What if a company wanted to offer 2 networks for customers: 1 in which they tell you they'll shape the network traffic to ensure consistent performance for all non-video traffic and another in which they tell it's completely unshaped? It would be interesting to see the two side by side as actual consumer choices. If I'm buying for an office, for example, I'd take the shaped-kill-the-video plan all dang day. If I'm at home...not so much.

wtallis 10y ago
Any such ISP would be lying to their customers with a false dichotomy. The smart way of shaping network traffic to ensure consistent performance for all non-video traffic would have the side effect of ensuring consistent performance for all video traffic, up to the limit of the ISP having oversubscribed their lines—and that limit obviously still exists for non-video uses too. Video is not the problem. Congestion is, whether or not video is part of the traffic contributing to the congestion. Congestion can be managed reasonably without discriminating against video, and even if an ISP wants to discriminate against video (eg. due to having a conflict of interest in the form of a separate video delivery service) the ISP should still want robust congestion management in place to handle growing volumes of non-video traffic.

DaiPlusPlus 10y ago

There is a case to be had for how vertical-integration makes businesses more efficient and means there can be some cost-savings for consumers (e.g. if Comcast zero-rated their own streaming video service and included it in their customers' cable Internet fees then consumers would save $10/mo they wouldn't be paying to Netflix - in much the same way Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer meant no-one pays for Netscape or Opera anymore). A problem with simplifying the problem to "prioritizing traffic" when engaging with laypeople is that opponents of net-neutrality can set-up a strawman argument presenting NN as "treating gaming and porn traffic the same as vital 911 and emergency services traffic on the Internet!" (i.e. conflating NN with QoS), or arguing it's only fair that popular services pay for the extra data transfer they use (that's what peering agreements are for and is unrelated to NN), or worse: proclaiming NN will enable child pornography: https://thenextweb.com/us/2010/08/19/riaa-speaks-out-against-net-neutrality-again/ https://thenextweb.com/us/2010/08/19/riaa-speaks-out-against... - we should call it what it is: anti-economic rent-seeking behavior on the part of the monopolistic audience gatekeepers. I believe NN is an example of a "good" regulation necessary to enable free markets - I'd wager the majority of genuine (non-astroturf) NN opponents take the stance in the sincere belief that Government 'interference and regulation' should not impact ISPs' internal business practices - so you should frame it as something "that enables free-markets and increases competition which is better for the consumer and industry" (and avoid the R-word)

massysett 10y ago
As a NN opponent, you have somewhat captured my viewpoint. Mostly I think NN is fighting the last war. NN proponents continually assert there is no competition for wired Internet and, therefore, it must be regulated. I think looking at wired Internet defines much too narrow a market. As wireless proliferates, it will become increasingly important, and competition in wireless is alive and well. The recent reignition of wars over "unlimited" data underscores this. I am reminded of the zeal to regulate or break up Microsoft. I was one of those zealots. Of course, then mobile changed everything, and now it doesn't matter so much that Microsoft has a monopoly on Windows PCs. If I were Comcast I'd be scared, and legitimately so. The wireless players have access to most American consumers. Each cable operator only has access to the homes that get its wire--a small fraction of the market available to a wireless company. We're better off with vibrant cable operators who can compete with wireless however they see best. If that means zero rating or non-neutral networks, OK. Further, I am struck by the arrogance of the belief that the government knows best how to regulate this market. Looking back I think it's absurd that I wanted government to break MS into "browser co." and "OS co." The market took care of this problem and now Windows users proactively install Chrome. I think that in a few short years, the drive to regulate the Internet will look like similar folly. So in short I see no problem here to solve and I do not think government should get involved.

subverter 10y ago

I think it's because it removes an entire vector that these companies can compete on. They can compete on price, support, coverage, etc. – but service-wise, they all have to be the same. They can't differentiate themselves, which is important to entice entrepreneurs to get into the business.

and0 10y ago
Sounds like a utility to me!
st3v3r 10y ago
I fail to see how that's a problem.